While the 9/11 memorial services held last Sunday in our nation's
capital and in the open field at Shanksville, Pennsylvania were
conspicuously religious in tone, the official service honoring the
victims and their families at Lower Manhattan's Ground Zero was
notably, indeed professedly, secular. At the behest of New York City's
mayor, Michael Bloomberg, clergy were expressly excluded from
participation in the proceedings. If anything, still more
surprising was the mayor's decree excluding from the ceremony those who
would represent the heroic First Responders, the firemen, police
officers and Port Authority officials who had rushed to the scene of
the enflamed Twin Towers and then sacrificed their own lives in their
effort to save the lives of others. By way of compensation for such
exclusion from the ceremonies at Ground Zero, and at the initiative of
their surviving fellow firefighters, the 343 firemen who were engulfed
in the flames as the towers collapsed or who were crushed under the
debris that exploded from the towers were honored at a Solemn High Mass
at St. Patrick's Cathedral, with Archbishop Timothy Dolan presiding, on
Saturday, September the tenth.

Members of the First Responders' families were justifiably indignant at
Mayor Bloomberg's high-handed action. May I share with you here the
eloquent tribute written by the brother of one of the fallen firemen,
an expression, too, of protest against Mayor Bloomberg's insulting
diktat. The tribute appeared as an Op-Ed essay in the September 7th
edition of The Wall Street Journal.

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No Firemen at Ground Zero this
9/11? Michael Burke The
Wall Street Journal, September 7, 2011

In our darkest hour, they gave
us hope - the firefighters of September 11. In the chaos
at the World Trade Center, the rigs pulled up, the men climbed out,
retrieved their roll-up hoses and marched stalwart to the towers.
Carrying nearly a hundred pounds of equipment they climbed the stairs,
flight after flight after flight. A woman in the North Tower,
descending from the 89th floor said, "When I saw the firemen I knew we
would be all right."

When they arrived at the base of the towers, there were jumpers by the
score. Two firefighters, terribly, were struck. "There is no way to put
it," an EMS who witnessed it said; "they exploded."

And still they went in.

In the lobby of the towers the men gathered, awaiting their orders. Outside the bodies rained down.
Before a blown out elevator lay two victims, their clothes burnt off,
their bodies charred. The huge pane-glass windows were shattered, the
stone walls cracked. There was a report that more planes had been
hijacked; they were headed to New York.

And still they went up.

In the South Tower, Battalion Chief Oreo Palmer, a marathon runner,
shed his heavy equipment and coat and ran
up the stairs. By 10 a.m. he had reached the 78th floor, the point of
the plane's impact. The fires raged. "Send up two engine
companies," he radioed down, "and we'll knock this down." Minutes later
the tower collapsed.

In the North Tower, four office workers, two young men and two young
women, were crossing the lower lobby, heading for the exit where a
fireman waved.

Then the South Tower collapsed.

Its debris blew into the North Tower, killing Fire Department Chaplain
Father Mychal Judge and destroying the lower lobby. The ceiling caved
in and the lights were knocked out. Now injured and bloodied, the
four office workers climbed out from beneath the debris. Breathing
dust, they gazed about in the pitch blackness. They had made it all
this way only to die steps from escape. Then they saw the light. The fireman at the exit was still there,
waving his small flashlight. The four headed for it and made
their way out.

As they crossed the plaza into the daylight, one of the men looked
back. The fireman was still there, standing his ground in case others needed help.

And there he undoubtedly was when the full 110-story tower came down
upon him.

"Courage," Winston
Churchill said, "is the first
of human qualities because it is the quality that guarantees all of the others."

Three hundred and forty-three
firefighters, 37 Port Authority police officers, 23 New York Police
Department officers and three court officers died at the World Trade
Center. In response, America and the world hailed their heroism
and sacrifice. Firehouses across the city became virtual shrines. New
Yorkers gathered on the West Side Highway at a place that came to be
called "Gratitude Point" to thank the police, firefighters and iron
workers as they traveled to and from Ground Zero. Professional ball
players wore their caps. School children's drawings honored them.

For weeks ordinary New Yorkers and visitors from out of town attended
their hundreds of memorial services across the city and area suburbs -
and were grateful for the opportunity to do so. When they were held at St. Patrick's
Cathedral, Fifth Avenue - New York's Main Street - came to a halt.

Who - especially on the 10th
anniversary of their sacrifice - would deny the first responders their
due and proper honor? New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg. His
office says that because of the number of victims' family members
attending there's not enough room to
accommodate first responders at Ground Zero that day, though
"we're working to find ways to recognize and honor first responders,
and other groups, at different places and times." Different places and times?

When President Obama, after the killing of Osama bin Laden, visited New
York City, he stopped by a Times Square firehouse that lost 15 men. Why
did he do that? Later that day I had the opportunity to meet the
president. I showed him a photo of my
brother, FDNY Capt. Billy Burke, Engine Co. 21, who perished in the
North Tower after refusing to leave the side of Ed Beyea, a computer
programmer and wheel-chair-bound quadriplegic. "I feel that the
Navy Seals walked in the steps of my brother and all the other first
responders of 9/11," I told him.

"That is just what I told the firefighters this morning," he replied.

The firemen, being who they are, would never complain or bring
attention to themselves. I, however, am not a fireman. Just the son of
one and the brother of another. To
deny the firefighters and our first responders - these most humble and
dedicated servants of New York -the opportunity to honor, at Ground
Zero on 9/11, their lost brothers and sisters is atrocious.
[Emphasis added]

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Life, however, does go on. And
sometimes, phoenix-like, it does rise up from the ashes. A successor to the Twin Towers is now
four-fifths of the way towards reaching its planned final height of 104
storeys. Whatever you may think of its aesthetic quality, at the very
least the popularly designated "Freedom Tower" reaffirms America's
energy and determination, as did the Empire State Building, some
eighty years ago, which soared to its then (early 1930's) unprecedented
height as an assertion of confidence, rising as a symbol of hope out of
the depths of the Great Depression. The British weekly journal The Economist offered the following
report on what is taking place at Ground Zero today.

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Ground
Zero Plus Ten The Economist, September
3, 2011

On September 11th 2001 everyone who was at their desk at Cantor
Fitzgerald, on the 101th - 105th floors of the World Trade Center's
North Tower, died. Of the company's
960 New York-based employees, 658 were killed, including Gary
Lutnick, brother of Howard, the firm's chief executive. In all, the attacks took 2,752 lives from
the city. But the disaster called forth great-heartedness. A week
later, when it was not yet clear the company would survive - it was
losing $1 million a day and was in need of a $75 billion loan - Mr.
Lutnick announced that Cantor would share 25% of the firm's profits
with victims' families for five years and would provide them with
health insurance for ten years. This amounted to $180 million. The
families also received $45 million in bonuses.

Lower Manhattan, like Cantor Fitzgerald, suffered a devastating loss on
that day. Some 14 million square feet of office space was damaged or
destroyed and 65,000 jobs were relocated. Hundreds of businesses
closed, some permanently. Yet
ten years on, the area is doing well. According to the Downtown [Lower
Manhattan] Alliance, its vacancy rate is one of the lowest in the country. The volume
of apartment sales has
increased by 151 % since 2003. The
resident population has more than doubled, to 56,000, since 2001. Six
new schools have opened their doors since 2009. Last year almost
10 million tourists visited. Many stayed at one of the 18 hotels in
Lower Manhattan, three times the number in 2001. Though many companies fled in the first
two years after the attacks, today there are more downtown than there
were in 2001.

The biggest change is at the site itself. After years of construction
delays and paralysis,One World Trade Centre, formerly known as
"Freedom Tower", now tops 80 floors. It is beginning to
dominate the downtown skyline as the twin towers once did. Still two years from completion, when it
will reach 104 storeys, 1 million square feet of it is already
leased to Condé Nast, a publishing company. The 9/11 museum, meanwhile, will not
open till next September; but visitors to the site will soon be able to
see two of the steel trident-shaped supports from the original budding,
which survived and have now been enclosed in the museum's glass atrium.
Seeing them for the first time since they were salvaged from the
pulverized buildings is powerfully impressive. Visitors will also be
able to see and touch the 70 foot
underground wall that mercifully HELD BACK the Hudson River during the
attacks.

The memorial, called "Reflecting
Absence", will open on September 11th. I Main features are two pools on
the footprints of the fallen towers with accompanying waterfalls. The
names of the dead are inscribed in the bronze that surrounds the pools.
They may appear jumbled, but people
who worked together and died together are grouped together.

Special requests were accommodated, such as one made by the daughter of
a man who died on Flight AA11, which crashed into the tower where her
best friend was killed. The two are inscribed together. Joe Daniels,
the memorial's overseer, called the grouping of the names the most
challenging part of the project; many families wanted more information
to be given about their lost ones. "How we remember the dead says a
lot," says Edie Lutnick, Howard and Gary's sister. "We could have done
better." Still, seeing the names of
so many dead is moving indeed. The memorial also includes a survivor, a
pear tree that was originally planted in the WTC plaza in the
1970's. It was found amid the rubble, was nursed back to health and was
returned to the site last year.

Security at the memorial will be tight. All visitors will be screened.
New York's police department has boosted its presence in the area,
which is still in the terrorists' sights. Under the direction of Ray
Kelly, the police commissioner, the New York Police Department has
expanded its mission to include counter-terrorism.
Some 1,000 officers work its
terrorism division. New York detectives are deployed in 11 FOREIGN
cities, and departmental linguists at home (including native speakers
of Arabic, Pushtu, and Bengali) look and listen out for worrying
chatter. The police department has installed an extensive camera
system, license-plate readers and air monitors. A dozen plots against New York have been
thwarted or have failed since the attacks, including one to blow up the
Brooklyn Bridge. Last year a home-grown terrorist attempted, but
failed, to set off a bomb in Times Square.

As the tenth anniversary approaches, documentaries and special reports
are being broadcast almost nightly. Books covering the anniversary,
including Ms. Lutnick's "An Unbroken Bond" are hitting the shops. Every
museum and gallery seems to be holding some sort of commemorative
event. But New Yorkers do not need a reminder. Every day they are told,
"If you see something, say something." There are few buildings where a
photo-ID is not required for access, notes Steve Malanga of the
Manhattan Institute, a think-tank. And
many of New York's first-responders are STILL suffering and many may be
dying because they were exposed to toxins during the RESCUE efforts
AFTER the attacks, despite being told by the Environmental
Protection Agency that the air was safe.

Getting compensation for these brave people was harder that it should
have been. Congress dragged its feet for years, but was eventually
shamed into passing the Zadroga Act at the end of last year. On August
29th the fund expanded the
"dust zone", which means that more people who fell ill because of living or working in the area can
now.apply for coverage. Cancer claims, however, are excluded.

Today Cantor Fitzgerald is thriving. Its staff had grown to 1,400. And,
like New York, it has changed. It, too, is a lot more cautious. Its new
offices are in midtown, and all its floors can be reached by the fire
department's ladders.
[Emphasis added].